You know that moment where you read a text and your stomach drops?
You meant: “Can we talk about this later?”
They heard: “I do not care.”
Now it is not a simple scheduling question anymore. It is tone. It is history. It is the last three times you felt dismissed. It is the fact that you are exhausted and they are stressed and nobody has slept well all week.
And suddenly you are not even arguing about the thing. You are arguing about what the thing means.
That is context. And it is why conflict is not always about two people being dramatic or difficult. Sometimes the environment around the disagreement is doing half the work.
Context is everything surrounding a conflict that shapes what people can do and what they are likely to do. It includes relationship history, group identity, and the rules of the system you are in. It also includes the physical world: where you are, what is accessible, and what options exist when things get tense.
Two bodies of research land on the same message: conflict gets most intense and hardest to manage when multiple layers stack at once, and when the environment limits what people can realistically choose next (Kaufman et al., 2019; Freek et al., 2024).
The “stacked kindling” problem: when conflict has more than one fuel source
Picture this.
You are in a team meeting. Somebody makes a comment that could be harmless on a good day. But it lands wrong. Then someone else piles on. Then you notice the room divide into sides without anyone saying, “We have sides.”
Later, someone says, “This escalated so fast. How did we get here?”
A big part of the answer is that many conflicts are not powered by one cause. They are powered by a mix.
Research on intractable conflicts (the kind that linger and resist easy resolution) points out that these conflicts often come from overlapping domains: social identity, cultural narratives, and institutional structures all tangled together (Kaufman et al., 2019). When that happens, the argument is not only about the immediate issue. It becomes a stand in for deeper grievances, fears, and power struggles.
In everyday life, this looks like:
- A couple fighting about dishes, but it is really about “I feel alone in this.”
- Coworkers fighting about process, but it is really about “My expertise is not respected.”
- A community fighting about a policy, but it is really about “We have been ignored for years.”
When the fuel sources overlap, the conflict becomes harder to “solve” with one clever conversation. You are not dealing with one problem. You are dealing with a pile.
The environment is not background. It actively shapes what people do next.
Now let’s zoom out and get physical.
When conflict breaks out in a region, people often assume movement is simple: people leave and go somewhere safer. But in real life, movement is constrained by roads, seasons, security, and access. Your options are shaped by what is open, safe, and reachable.
Freek and colleagues modeled forced displacement during the Mali conflict using a framework that tracks how routes and accessibility change over time. They show that when the physical environment changes, travel options change, and displacement patterns change right along with them (Freek et al., 2024).
Let’s translate that into human terms.
When options shrink, people funnel. They bunch up. They get stuck at bottlenecks. They crowd into the few places that remain accessible. That can intensify pressure on resources, increase vulnerability, and shift the conflict’s consequences.
Even in everyday life, you have seen a small version of this.
If you have one narrow hallway in your house and two people are upset, it is harder to “take space.” If you live in a small apartment with no quiet corner, tension has nowhere to go. If you are trapped in a car mid argument, your conflict has a physical container.
The point is simple: physical constraints change the choices available, and that changes the conflict trajectory (Freek et al., 2024).
Stakes and scale turn arguments into battles
Another thing that changes everything is what is on the line.
In research on intractable conflict, the scale of the conflict and potential negative consequences influence which tools people reach for, from dialogue and mediation to legal mechanisms and, in more severe cases, coercive responses.
When the stakes are high, even small misunderstandings can feel existential.
You are not just saying, “I disagree.” You are saying, “This could cost me my job.” Or, “This could change my family.” Or, “This could put my community at risk.”
High stakes push people toward urgency, certainty, and defensiveness. That is not always moral failure. Sometimes it is an adaptive response to perceived threat.
Information and media can turn a spark into a wildfire
If you have ever watched a conflict get worse because of how it was talked about, you already understand this piece.
Kaufman and colleagues note that media can play a role in conflict processes that is not always constructive.
In everyday terms, your “media ecosystem” might be:
- the group chat
- workplace gossip
- social media posts
- the one coworker who always “just asks questions”
- the family member who calls everyone right after a blowup
Communication systems can help people clarify. They can also amplify distortion. And once distortion spreads, people react to stories, not reality.
So what contexts are most prone to conflict?
When you pull the research together, you get a pretty clear picture of higher risk contexts:
- Overlapping causes: identity, history, and institutions all involved.
- Constrained options: mobility limits, bottlenecks, access issues, changing routes (Freek et al., 2024).
- High stakes and large scale: more consequences, more escalation pressure.
- Amplifying information systems: communication channels that reward heat over clarity.
This is why some conflicts are “manageable disagreements” and others become drawn out and consuming.
How context shapes what conflict looks like once it starts
Context does not just influence whether conflict happens. It shapes how conflict behaves.
Here are five ways the research helps us see that.
1) Context shapes meaning, not just behavior
In conflict, people argue about meaning more than facts.
History, cultural norms, and institutional design influence what people see as fair, what they interpret as disrespect, and what feels like an unacceptable loss. Managing conflict requires understanding stakeholders’ interests, history, culture, and institutional arrangements because those things shape both grievance and resolution paths (Kaufman et al., 2019).
This is why “But I did not mean it that way” rarely lands. Meaning is not only intention. It is interpretation shaped by context.
2) Constraints shape strategy and survival
Freek et al. show that displacement during conflict follows routes shaped by a changing physical environment. When accessibility changes, movement changes (Freek et al., 2024).
Constraints do not just limit comfort. They channel behavior.
In human terms: if the only exit is one road, everyone takes it. If safe zones are limited, people pile into them. If movement is risky, people stay in danger longer.
3) Context determines what tools are realistic
In some systems, mediation is trusted. In others, it is seen as weakness or manipulation.
Kaufman et al. emphasize that conflict management tools vary depending on context, scale, and the potential consequences, ranging from diplomacy and mediation to legal and coercive responses (Kaufman et al., 2019).
This is why conflict advice that sounds good on Instagram often fails in real life. The tool has to fit the system.
4) Communication channels influence escalation
Media and information flow shape how conflict spreads and hardens. When communication rewards outrage, polarization increases. When it supports clarity, de escalation becomes more possible.
You can sometimes predict the path of a conflict by watching who has the microphone and what kind of content gets rewarded.
5) Complexity raises uncertainty, which makes futures thinking necessary
In complex contexts, it is harder to predict what happens next.
Kaufman et al. argue that managing intractable conflicts requires exploring possible futures to build strategy. Freek et al. show that incorporating dynamic environmental information improves forecasting of displacement patterns, which matter for humanitarian and security planning (Kaufman et al., 2019; Freek et al., 2024).
This is less about “predicting the future” and more about preparing for plausible trajectories.
Is conflict a normal way of communicating?
Here is the reframe that makes a lot of people exhale: conflict is often a form of communication.
Not always mature communication. Not always fair. But communication.
Conflict can communicate:
- unmet needs
- competing priorities
- identity threat
- breakdowns in trust
- failures of institutions or systems
Intractable conflict research treats conflict as an expected social phenomenon, one that can be managed with structured approaches rather than dismissed as chaos. And displacement dynamics show that movement patterns during conflict reflect the interaction of security, geography, and infrastructure, revealing where pressures and needs are concentrated (Freek et al., 2024).
So yes, conflict can be “normal” in the sense that it is recurring and informative.
But normal does not mean harmless.
Conflict can also destroy the communication channels that would make repair possible, especially when media amplification, displacement, and fear take over (Freek et al., 2024).
What this means in the real world
Two takeaways rise to the top.
First, context sensitive thinking is not optional. If conflict is shaped by overlapping social, institutional, and physical factors, you cannot manage it well by focusing on only one layer (Kaufman et al., 2019; Freek et al., 2024).
Second, modeling and planning get stronger when they include both human dynamics and environmental constraints. Exploring possible futures and incorporating changing physical environments can improve how we anticipate displacement and its ripple effects (Kaufman et al., 2019; Freek et al., 2024).
If you have ever felt like you were losing your mind because a conflict “was not about the thing,” you were probably picking up on context. Conflict is not just a clash of opinions. It is a signal that the system around the disagreement is shaping what people can say, what they can do, and what they believe is at stake. When you learn to see the context, you stop blaming everything on personality and you start understanding what is actually driving the fire.
References
Freek, B., Jahani, A., Bas, O., & Groen, D. (2024). Analysing the effect of a dynamic physical environment network on the travel dynamics of forcibly displaced persons in Mali. International Journal of Network Dynamics and Intelligence, 100003. https://doi.org/10.53941/ijndi.2024.100003
Kaufman, M., Diep, H., & Kaufman, S. (2019). Sociophysics of intractable conflicts: Three group dynamics. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and Its Applications, 517, 175–187. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2018.11.003
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